


Do Not Go Gentle

by TenSpencerRiedPlease



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Character Death, Feels, Gen, Heavy Angst, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, I Made Myself Cry, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, Peter Quill Feels, Peter Quill Needs a Hug, Sad Ending, Tony Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, fuck after reading this everyone will need a hug, honestly i am so sorry guys, i am about to rip your heart out several times over, just sadness in general, like seven times while writing this, seriously my guys i am sorry, this is like super damn sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-14 09:57:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11780751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TenSpencerRiedPlease/pseuds/TenSpencerRiedPlease
Summary: Peter Quill has had to watch an unfortunate amount of people in his life die. Well, okay so maybe only three people but anyone who has felt loss,trulyfelt it, knew that once was more than anyone ever deserved. This time though the people in his life were watching him die and he couldn’t help but be happy that at least there were two people in his life that could be spared the pain of his the tumor that was, like his mother’s, slowly eating away at his brain.





	Do Not Go Gentle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DearNymphadora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DearNymphadora/gifts).



> The poem, for those who might not know it right away, is Dylan Thomas. It's one of my fav poems and very appropriate here.
> 
> Anyways so I was watching The Fault In Our Stars earlier with a friend and to be a jackass I wrote this thing. Coincidentally this is also the day of my Nana's funeral, which probably explains why this came out so fucking sad aside from you know, watching a sad movie before writing this. Despite easily being the most depressing thing I've ever written by far I hope you like it.
> 
> Warning for deaths, in case you missed the major character death tag.

Do not go gentle into that good night,  
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;  
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Peter Quill has had to watch an unfortunate amount of people in his life die. Well, okay so maybe only three people but anyone who has felt loss, _truly_ felt it, knew that once was more than anyone ever deserved. This time though the people in his life were watching him die and he couldn’t help but be happy that at least there were two people in his life that could be spared the pain of his the tumor that was, like his mother’s, slowly eating away at his brain. Yondu may not have been good to him all the time but he was more of a father than his actual father, who had been nothing but a disappointment in the end. And his mom, his poor mom, was at least spared the image that Peter last had of her pale and afraid looking at him right before her death. No one deserved to see someone they loved slowly whither away until they were nothing but the shell that once housed who they were.

Dying was weird though because Peter learns how selfish it made people, not that he didn’t understand. He’s felt that loss too and he knew that people were desperately trying to avoid more pain by telling him to hold on, that he could make it through this but Peter knew he was dying the moment he got his diagnoses. It was everyone else that thought otherwise and, because he knew how they felt, he fought for them. If it were up to him he would have gone out in a ball of fire and ash like a badass and on his own terms but he decided not to thanks to an unlikely source.

“I’m sorry I didn’t do none of it right…” he had gone on to say that he was proud of Peter, proud that he was Yondu’s son. But Peter knew a little something about not doing anything right because he’s been a selfish little prick his whole life, always screwing everything up for everyone around him just because he felt like it. So for once he did the honorable thing and he stuck around not for himself, but for everyone else around him. Because there was a certain point in sickness where you don’t really care about you anymore, you care about everyone else instead because there’s a point when you realize that you’re going to die and you accept it. Everyone else around you though, they have a harder time with accepting that because accepting someone you love is going to die is a bitter pill to swallow. He’d know.

When Tony comes in he thinks Peter is asleep, most do when he was like this but in actuality he was just so tired he couldn’t open his eyes. He used to think he knew what that feeling was like but there was a totally different kind of tired that the hung over version of himself couldn’t have known about yet. Now he wished he never knew. Still, Tony sits down beside his bed and sighs deeply.

“You know I wish I could leave you. That’s fucking selfish but I’ve never been good at handling things when they were less than a joke, you know that,” he says. Peter appreciates the honesty. He’s pretty sure Tony was the only one who was honest to him these days, the only one who didn’t sugarcoat how he felt. “I thought about it. I mean I could just walk away right now and never come back, go back to being the most eligible bachelor on the market, sleep around a bunch like the old days, go back to drinking too much. Gamora would find me and murder me but hey, guess at least I wouldn’t have to live in a world without you and I guess that’s what I want anyways. Couldn’t do it though, don’t know why. I’ve never been known for selflessness.”

But he was rather known for punishing himself in weird and unusual ways. Peter suspected Tony stuck around to make up for all the people he abandoned in the past, torturing himself with images on Peter in his last days because even Tony was selfish in the face of someone else’s death. Once he read that death didn’t hurt anyone except the living and, well, it wasn’t wrong. Death was about to release Peter from his suffering, he’d be glad for it, but everyone else? Well, they were the ones that had to actually suffer with his loss. He used to be afraid of death but when you were close to it something happened, something shifted he guessed, and suddenly the end of what was probably a meaningless stint on his hell planet was more appealing. They were all bound to go back to the stars eventually. Peter just thought he’d go out with more of a bang.

*

Of all the people Peter expected to have a teary good bye it wasn’t Rocket. Gamora was the one who acted hard but had a heart; Peter was just pretty sure that Rocket was a twat through and through. They never did get along and the last time they spoke things hadn’t ended well between them. So when he visits Peter, who was a day away from death at most, in the hospital he’s pretty surprised not that he can express it in his current condition.

“Hey Pete,” Rocket says, his voice wavering slightly in a way Peter hadn’t known it was capable of. “Look, I know I was an ass to you the last time we spoke and I really don’t have a right to be here but it didn’t seem right to just leave things the way they were. I don’t want your forgiveness; I don’t really deserve it either. But I wanted you to know that I’m sorry. You were my best friend next to Groot and I was an ass because I was afraid that you’d leave. Stark’s afraid of that too. Poor bastard almost looks as bad as you, I almost pity him but he also told me to go fuck a cactus when I showed up here so I don’t pity him that much,” Rocket says in a far clearer voice than what he started with.

If he were capable Peter would have laughed. Of course Tony mostly kept his humor in a situation like this, or maybe especially because it was a situation like this. Steve asked him once, in an annoyed tone shortly after Peter had been diagnosed with his deadly tumor and Tony made a joke, if he thought everything was a joke. Tony hadn’t responded but Peter understood because he was that way too. Humor was a shield against all that was sad, and if you could laugh about it you wouldn’t have to feel the pain. If you made it a joke you took away its ability to hurt you, you gained power over it and in a situation like this that was all Tony had to cling to. Peter’s condition was terminal so Peter didn’t care about the bad jokes because when Tony had disappeared for three months he made them too. Better than the alternative and both of them were pretty famous for doing anything to avoid feeling pain.

“Okay,” Rocket says, drawing Peter’s admittedly small span of attention back to him. “I’m just going to say what no one else will, man. Just die. I don’t mean that in a mean way, I don’t… I don’t want you to die,” Rocket croaks out. “God knows I don’t but watching you live like this is worse than death so let go. Go off to whatever afterlife might come after this shithole of an experience and go fucking things up with Yondu, or like visit your mom or something. Just do what you need to.”

Rocket thinks he’s being selfless, telling Peter to let go, but no one ever told a person it was okay to go until it became too painful to watch them stay. Telling them to go, too, was selfish. Again, it was the kind of selfish he knew was normal, expected even. But no one would have wanted him to go when he was ready to months ago, on his own terms. No, then everyone told him to fight, and Tony wondered if he could find some kind of technological cure, and everyone else acted confident for his sake but what they were really doing was reassuring themselves. Just like Rocket was reassuring himself now by telling Peter it was okay to go. It was all to make someone who wasn’t him feel better. He doesn’t hold it against any of them because humans were kind of like that, selfish until they couldn’t be anymore, not without sacrificing their own humanity to cross into cruelty. Peter’s condition was cruel now, and so Rocket told him to go because he couldn’t stand to see him here. He was no longer interested in keeping someone he loved around because to do so at this stage was just a shitty thing to do.

*

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,  
Because their words had forked no lightning they  
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Gamora doesn’t say much when she visits and Peter never questions it because that’s just Gamora. But she visits one day and sighs, “I know you had that thing with the damn present from your mother but I’ve had enough of it. You’re going to get that damn gift before you die,” she tells him and then music starts playing. That’s it, just music and Peter remembers his mom’s pretty bitchin taste in bands and the way he and Tony used to argue all the time about which era was better, the seventies or the eighties. All their friends always told them they were both wrong because they were fucking heathens who liked modern pop music.

He isn’t aware when Gamora leaves, if she actually left, because he’s drifting in and out of consciousness and he’s more interested in the music anyways. His last gift from his mother, the present he stared at for like two decades because, like his friends, he didn’t want to feel the loss of someone he loved. But now he was feeling the loss of himself and that was more painful, in a literal sense, than the loss of his mom so he can’t really tell the difference between emotional and physical pain anyways. In it’s own way this was the perfect time for him to listen to the last thing his mom had ever given him before she died. He’s not surprised that he likes all the music, or all of what he can hear anyways.

When death finally comes he can feel the last of his life slipping away and he swears he sees his mother smiling at him. “Peter, take my hand…”

*

Tony has been sober for years, years before he met Peter even, and of course he’s had cravings the whole time but he’s never considered drinking more than the day Peter died. See, he wasn’t much of a quitter aside from giving up that particular vice but after so long it normally seemed stupid to start back up again. But sometimes whisky seemed like a good solution to his problems and alcohol always did a good job at making sure he never felt anything at all.

“I wouldn’t blame you, you know,” Rhodey tells him when he finds Tony staring at a bottle of whiskey two days after Peter had died.

Slowly, Tony turns to look at him and everything aches when he does it. He can’t remember when he last slept but he dreamed of Peter when he did and honestly he wished he could rip his brain out for that. “You wouldn’t?” he asks in a voice he barely recognizes as his own.

“No man, I wouldn’t. I’m not going to claim I understood your relationship with Peter but you two did love each other, I’d want to drown out the pain with alcohol too. But you know this isn’t a good idea,” he says gently. He sits down beside Tony and gently curls an arm around his shoulders and Tony thinks of the last time they were in this situation. They had been in MIT and Tony was still drunk from the night before and the cops were standing in front of him. At first he thought they were playing some kind of cruel prank on him, one surely set up but Howard to teach his ungrateful son a lesson but no, it was all real and Tony had lost his parents.

Rhodey had wrapped his arm around Tony’s shoulder then too, as a comforting gesture but Tony had been in shock so he hadn’t done much. There were no tears for his parents- something he’s long since felt guilty for- because it was hard to imagine a world without them. He didn’t cry when he found out, and he didn’t cry at the funeral either. It was months before, for a moment, he allowed himself to feel much of anything and for a single day all he did was cry. The night before he took over the company and turned it into something so large even Howard couldn’t have anticipated it. And then he destroyed it and started over again but it came back from that too because he was good at that, turning impossible situations around to his favor. It was how he escaped the terrorists too.

But Peter wasn’t his parents and he didn’t have his vices to help him, nor would he go back to them no matter how tempting it was. So he cried and Rhodey held onto him because that’s what Rhodey did, he took care of Tony even when he probably shouldn’t have. Tony tried to do the same for Peter but something told him he failed in that too.

*

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright  
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,  
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Howard used to tell him that Stark men don’t cry, Stark men were made of iron. Tony had long since decided his father’s lessons were overrated but for some reason he held onto that lesson for most of his life. Actually all of it until now. But he had long ago learned that not feeling anything didn’t really do much for you in the long run so maybe feeling every painful moment until it was gone was somehow the better option. Fuck if he knew, grief was never something he handled well.

He never got to say good-bye either, not to Peter directly. Technically his last words were ‘I love you’, which was what most might consider the ideal but it wasn’t really. Not when the phrase was forever poisoned for him. He’d never hear it again and think anything remotely positive but people told him he was lucky. None of this felt that way and he really had to wonder about people’s idea of luck. So in an attempt to say good-bye he figured he’d write a speech for the funeral. He’s a shit writer and he knows it, Pepper always wrote his speeches, but he thought Peter deserved at least that.

So he stands in front of a small gathering of people- Peter hadn’t wanted a big funeral or a funeral at all actually- and looks down at what he’s written. Then he rolls his eyes and puts the paper away because scripted has never been his style and he talks. “Look, I wrote some pretty death speech that probably sounds like every death speech you’ve ever heard. I swear to god no one is ever genuine at these things and I’m pretty known for just saying whatever I want so here it goes. Peter didn’t even want any of this; we’re only doing this whole funeral thing because _we_ wanted it. Because we’re selfish. Once Peter told me that he wished he had gone out in a ball of fire and ash because he didn’t want to go quietly and he wanted to go on his own terms. Dude was barely even lucid when he said it but there is it,” he says, throwing his arms up.

“He told me after that that when I escaped those terrorists and blew them all up, _that_ was his ideal death. You know, something flashy like you’d see in an action movie or whatever. He said that he wanted to die in a way that would leave a mark, to die fighting but in his own way, not in a goddamn hospital bed the way he did. He wanted to build his own way out of the world just like I almost did because he was weird and also a bit dramatic, but mostly because he always admired the way I climbed my way out of an impossible situation and basically flipped death off and did what wanted to. He liked the idea of building something out of nothing, and he always admired the way that I would have gone out in a literal explosion after doing the impossible. And he had been grateful that I managed to find a way to live too, that I managed to build something that would keep me alive,” he touches the arc reactor in his chest and sighs.

“Peter thought it was pretty awesome that I looked my fears in the eye and essentially told them to fuck off. What he didn’t know is that I never really gave a shit about myself, still don’t honestly, and dying has never been my worst fear. Hell, with all the reckless shit I’ve pulled I think it’s safe to say that I have a death wish. So I didn’t do anything brave by living, and everything Peter thought about that moment was built on a lie because I had never feared the inevitable. My greatest fear is losing the people I love and not being able to do anything about it, _this_ ,” he gestures around, “is my greatest fear. I managed to pull some scraps together in a fucking cave, survive an explosion, and a fall from the sky that sent me almost head first into some baking sand where I should have broke my neck but I couldn’t get rid a fucking measly _tumor_. What the fuck is the point of that? I didn’t deserve a second chance, I was a piece of shit, but I managed to live and he didn’t. I will never forgive myself for that; I should have found a way. I always find a way,” he whispers harshly.

He could do the impossible and yet the impossible still beat him in the end. Peter thought he looked his greatest fear in the eye and won but he didn’t. When Tony was met with his greatest fear he did what most everyone does, he broke down in a way he wasn’t sure he could recover from.

*

Because they were all a bunch of selfish assholes and Tony had nothing to lose anyways he figured he’d grant Peter’s wish of going out with a bang. Granted in the end all it ended up doing was aggravating Gamora into beating the living shit out of him for blowing up Peter’s urn but they had all been selfish pricks during his period of dying and the damn funeral too, he thought he’d at least _try_ to give Peter what he wanted. The explosion was huge too; it had attracted a lot of attention. Peter wanted his death to leave a mark and maybe all the news coverage was about Tony going nuts but it did leave a lasting impression on the public. But then Peter’s dying was bound to leave a mark anyways, just on the people who lost him.

So he had sat there with his nose gushing blood and his left eye swollen shut with Gamora and they both cried in the dirt. Later she apologized to him but he hadn’t really blamed her anyways. He probably would have beat himself up too if he were her and he _had_ hit her back. Something he promised he’d never do, hit a woman, but Gamora was a way better fighter anyways so Tony hadn’t stood a chance. And Gamora had, weirdly, been appreciative that he thought she was a worthy enough opponent to hit back. Apparently it didn’t happen often, even in the self-defense courses she taught where the entire point was to hit her because of some ingrained notion that men had a superior fighting ability. Tony wasn’t stupid enough to give himself that credit; he knew he’d be on the losing end of a fight between them even before they actually got into it. He had felt horrible for it but Gamora pointed out that she came at him; it was a pretty natural reaction to hit back. Didn’t really make him feel better but Gamora told him that not hitting her because she was a woman was stupid anyways because it assumed she couldn’t fight back. Tony had some nasty bruises to prove that wasn’t true.

Nebula had the credit for making sure Tony didn’t die because she happened to show up on the scene and dragged Gamora away, tossing her on the ground and telling her to get herself together in that weirdly harsh tone she used all the time. That was about when the crying started and Nebula had looked deeply uncomfortable the whole time but when they finally stopped she held up a basket she had brought with her full of jam from Kraglin’s weird canning phase that she recommended throwing at a wall. She had also helpfully brought a bunch of other breakables that they had eventually got to throwing around. Nebula told Tony he was a stupid genius for blowing Peter up and Gamora started crying again. Tony never took her for they crying type but apparently even she had her limits and if he were honest he cried in the jam too.

*

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,  
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,  
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Peter had always wanted to go out with a bang and until Tony was dying he thought he wanted to too. As it turned out watching someone die and then blowing them up onto to get your ass kicked by their best friend taught you a few things. Namely it taught Tony that for once in his damn life he wanted some damn peace and quiet. He’s never done anything small so he hadn’t thought he’d do death small either but he guessed that the reactor killing him after his greatest death-defying feat wasn’t really small. Ironic, that- the thing that was supposed to be keeping him alive was killing him.

He painstakingly got all his affairs together, leaving his company to Pepper in the absence of children, and most of his properties to Rhodey. He left Gamora all of Peter’s stuff to do what she wanted with, and Nebula got her pick of his extensive collection of hats that he never wore because she had taken a liking to them after meeting Kraglin. Rocket got shares in the company and a job offer even if Tony was certain he’d blow someone up in the lab. He was still a genius. Drax and Steve got the gym equipment, Natasha got his weapons, Bruce got all his lab gear, Clint got the cars, and everyone else got a good chunk of money. What money was left went to some choice charities and got split between Pepper and Rhodey.

He left Pepper and Rhodey letters, weird considering his favoring technology, and then fucked off to Italy when he felt the poisoning from the reactor spread. Once Peter told him he could feel himself dying and for some reason Tony thought it was a dramatic statement. Now that he was dying he knew it was true. It was weird, slowly feeling your faculties go as your sickness got worse. But he got to die on his own terms, even if he knew he was being a selfish ass about it. If he learned anything from Peter’s death it was that this was probably the time to be selfish. He knew his friends would do what they had with Peter and hoped for him to live, prodding him on until they couldn’t stand to see him anymore and then finally accepting the inevitable. He didn’t want that anymore than Peter had and unlike Peter he wasn’t noble enough to let them feel what they needed to before he went regardless of how he felt about his own demise. He just wanted to live out his dying days free of the media in a childhood house that didn’t have very many bad memories thanks to Howard hardly ever visiting the house.

His mom used to take him there as a kid, and later this was his and Rhodey’s get away place when they needed it, and then he and Peter had used it for their honeymoon. It was the easiest way to die with everyone he loved without actually making any of them watch him die. They all tried to contact him at least ten times a day; JARVIS let him know every time someone called even if he directed them all away. The AI was worried for him, an odd reaction from a computer, but then Tony _did_ try and program him to be as human as possible. He kind of felt bad for ruining this place for Rhodey in particular given his history with it but not bad enough to leave. The good news was that being a rich man with properties all over the world there was little chance his friends would think to look _here_ in particular.

He keeps up his no contact rule for about a week when he feels something change and he knows it’s coming soon, he just does. Nebula chooses then to send a video call request and he choses her to answer. She looks surprised and then frowns, looking behind her as if he could have somehow sensed that someone else was standing behind her and he actually wanted to talk to them. No one was behind her so she turns back, “why me?” she asks, jumping straight to the point.

Tony thinks for only a few seconds before he has his answer, “because I figured you’d handle it best,” he says and he tells her in simple terms that he’s dying.

Nebula wipes a stray tear away from her eye with that usual annoyed and angry look on her face, “what is it you want me to tell people?” she asks. He tells her where to find his will and the letters he wrote to people and to thank Kraglin for the jams.

That gets a huff of a laugh out of her even if it’s clear she doesn’t really find it funny. “Tony,” she says as he’s about to hang up. He stops and she takes a deep breath, “I know you thought I could handle this. You were wrong,” she says and the video cuts out as she turns her head but he can see the way it twists in pain anyways. For a moment the audio still plays and he can hear her sob for a brief few seconds before that cuts out too. He feels bad for sticking this on _her_ of all people but she was wrong about her not being able to handle it. Crying when you lose someone close was natural; he didn’t fault her for it or think it made her weak. He realizes he chose her because she was probably the only one who wouldn’t ask where he was, just what needed to be done because Nebula was easily the strongest person he knew even if she didn’t often know it.

*

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight  
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,  
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Rhodey figures it out too late. Of all the houses in the world, all the views, and all the cool things Tony has made or bought himself of course he’d chose that house in Italy. Tony liked to say he wasn’t sentimental, that he was a futurist who didn’t like to look into the past but that was only partially true. Tony only valued the past when it suited him, which was why they all scrambled around looking everywhere but where he actually was. They thought their options were too wide to narrow when really there was only once place Tony would ever choose to die.

In the end it didn’t matter because Rhodey figured it out too late. It had been the moment he dreaded so much in Afghanistan, finding Tony too late, and it turned out that that wasn’t the moment he wouldn’t be able to figure out where Tony was. He didn’t get to say good-bye, he didn’t get to comfort his best friend in his last days, and he didn’t figure out where he was in time and he wasn’t really sure he’d ever forgive himself for that. The choice was _obvious_ and it still eluded him. He managed to track down the man when he was looking for a needle in a haystack but in the end he proved none of that mattered when he didn’t even know his best friend well enough to know where he’d choose to die.

He sits on the steps of the house and cries, trying to ignore the smell when JARVIS speaks. “Sir,” the AI says almost hesitantly. “He left you a message.” The AI leaves it at that and for a long moment he considers ignoring it or something but he eventually decides to tell JARVIS to play whatever it was Tony left him.

“Hey Rhodes,” Tony’s voice says and he does his best to keep his crying quiet enough that he could still hear Tony. “I know you’re probably wondering why you didn’t think of this place sooner and probably blaming yourself for not figuring it out. But that was the whole point of coming here, it’s not like I’m known for being sentimental. Whatever it is your feeling I don’t blame you for not finding me, I never wanted you to. I didn’t want you to see me suffer and… and I wanted some peace. I’ve been in the limelight my whole life; I had no idea what it was like to be normal. Still don’t because you guys keep calling nonstop but I mean I tried. I guess I wasn’t meant to be normal. Anyways, I had written everything out before I left but I just realized I didn’t do anything with JARVIS. I mean he has to go somewhere, right? He had some commands to follow in the event of my death but they didn’t feel right.

“I left Pepper the company, figured you’d still want your military career and she’s been with me more than long enough to know what I would have wanted done with it. But JARVIS is different. Most people would think my company would be what mattered to me most but it isn’t. JARVIS is basically my son, he’s the only thing I’ve ever created with only myself in mind and I named him after my surrogate father. No one has ever understood him, why I created him, or why he was so important to me. Most people see a really cool AI, not everything that was underneath all that. Most people didn’t think to look either.

“In a lot of ways JARVIS has more of me than anything else I ever built, my company included. I built JARVIS to cope with the death of one of the most important people in my life and he’s been there for me through almost everything that’s ever happened to me. The only person who’s been there longer is you, so I’m giving JARVIS to you because it occurs to me that you’ve been there with me through it all, including building JARVIS back in MIT. You’re as much his creator as I am given how often you helped me out when I thought I couldn’t do it or messed something up. JARVIS is only here because you encouraged me to make him and inspired me to finish him. You’re the only one I could ever trust with him, my surrogate son, because you’re the only one who understands he’d not just an AI.

“So in the event of my obvious death I give to you my greatest creation because you’re the reason he’s here to begin with, and because no one else is worthy of him. Please Rhodey, the next time you blame yourself for not figuring out where I went remember JARVIS was previously set to self-destruct in the event of my death because I couldn’t trust anyone with him. But I trust you because you’re my best friend and you’re the only one who understood my technology and how I relate to it. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t find me in time, Rhodey, because you were there when I needed you to be. You were there when no one else was, not even JARVIS, which just might make you the single most important person in my life.

“If someone writes a biography of my life tell them that I wasn’t the one who was great, not really, because it was always you that inspired me, right from the beginning of my climb to greatness. Tell them that my biography shouldn’t be about me because I wouldn’t be me without you. And tell them that my death wasn’t about me either, not really. Tell them that it was about Peter. Make sure that my life is greater than the sum of what I made because it was the people in my life that inspired it all to happen, right till the very end. I never would have been me without you, and I never would have gotten the death I truly wanted without Peter. In the end I want people to know that it was those that were around me that made me important, that they made me worth talking about. In the probably very likely chance someone writes about my life tell them that I never would have got there without you; tell them that I gave you JARVIS. And tell them that I’m where I want to be, with Peter, which is probably the only place I’ll ever feel like I belong.”

Rhodey sits there for a long time processing that before JARVIS speaks. “I am awaiting orders, sir,” the AI reminds him.

He nods somewhat numbly and sighs, “save that message. And JARVIS, was… did he suffer?” he asks.

The AI takes a moment to answer. “No, I don’t believe he did,” JARVIS tells him. Later, when Rhodey knows exactly how Tony died he knew JARVIS lied to him but he couldn’t bring himself to be mad at the AI for doing it. JARVIS never was just an AI, not to Tony, and not to Rhodey either because ‘just an AI’ wouldn’t have lied to make someone feel better. AI don’t have feelings because they’re computers, but Tony built something beyond that. Whatever Tony said, whatever it was he felt about his work Rhodey knew he didn’t know the truth about that either. What made Tony Stark great was his brain, not anyone else around him.

*

Rhodey stands there looking at a crowd of thousands because Tony Stark was well loved and well known but he had a promise to keep, even if he technically made that promise to a dead man. He had written a nice, touching speech that was probably something Tony would have hated because it didn’t sound real but none of these people were about to understand what he was going to say anyways. The exceptions to that rule would know and that, he felt, was all that mattered.

“The world will shake at the loss of Tony Stark because he has changed the way we do things over and over again. He has made history several times over, and in the end despite his father’s impressive resume the man will only be a footnote in his son’s history. This is because Tony Stark was a great man with even greater ambitions. Tony Stark may have shook the world on several different occasions, but it was Peter Quill who was strong enough to shake Tony Stark back. Tony had a touch act to follow, most didn’t even try and Peter was one of those people. He never felt the need to match Tony’s impressive talents, money, or fame because he had something better. Understanding. It wasn’t something Tony got a lot of and in his dying moments it was Peter Quill he held on to, not his inventions or his company, not his fame. Tony held onto his husband because what really mattered to him underneath all that flash and fame was the people he loved most, the people who understood him.”

People clap obviously but they don’t really understand the last bit of Tony’s speech because to them Tony had thousands of friends, thousands of people who understood him, adored him. But that wasn’t true. Tony Stark, despite all his glitz and glamour, had a small circle of friends and an even smaller circle of people who understood him.

Rhodey looks around and catches the eye of Nebula of all people, wearing one of Tony’s old hats and looking far better in it than he ever did, and she smiles because despite not knowing Tony all that well she was one of the few people who understood him. He gives her a brief nod and steps down so someone else can give some speech about how great Tony was even though they never really knew him at all. Rhodey doesn’t mind though because he knew Tony and that was all that mattered.

**Author's Note:**

> Bonus points for anyone who can figure out what Peter was referencing in the beginning though the quote is actually (verbatim)- "Dying never hurts anyone except those is leaves behind". It's one of my favorite quotes of anything ever but given that I tend to write humor I've never gotten a chance to reference it before.
> 
> [My writing Tumblr](https://tenspencerriedplease.tumblr.com/)


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